Sibal to meet IIT directors tomorrow

New Delhi: HRD Minister Kapil Sibal will meet IIT directors tomorrow to resolve the common entrance exam row as the government proposal is being resisted by some of the IITs. Sibal will chair the meeting of the IIT council, the highest decision making body of these elite institutes comprising IIT directors and heads of other educational bodies, deliberating on a resolution adopted by the IIT Joint Admission Board (JAB) which met here last Saturday.

The resolution was adopted by the JAB after discussing a compromise formula which was supposedly floated by the HRD Ministry to end the current impasse. IIT-Delhi and IIT-Kanpur had rejected the proposed format on the ground that the test was "academically unsound and procedurally untenable". As per the compromise formula, JAB has sought a suitable time gap between the main and the advanced tests so that the results of mains are available before the advanced and only the top 1,50,000 candidates (including all categories) in the mains appear in the advance test.

The JAB resolution has also stressed that admission to the IITs be based only on rank achieved in the advance test "subject to the condition that selected candidates are in the top 20 percentile of successful candidates of their Boards".

The government had on May 28 announced the new test from 2013, under which aspiring candidates for IITs and other central institutes such as NITs and IIITs will have to take tests under a new format of common entrance test which will also take the plus two board results into consideration.

According to sources, the IIT Council could also consider the feasibility of holding common counselling for all Centrally Funded Technical Institutions (CFTIs). It could further take a stand on the issues raised in certain quarters that the Council does not have legal competence to decide on the admission standards in the IIT system.

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